My apologies, you two are both right, you can buy the sim cards on the street. I haven't bought a sim card in a few years so I completely forgot about those. With those you run the risk of there being multiple copies of your particular card being sold and someone sending malicious messages in your name, but I guess if you don't use your real information you're fine. Plus, those cards sold on the street are sometimes cards from stolen cell phones, so use at your own risk.

In my previous post I was referring to the cards you buy in the store itself. When I bought my SIM card at China Mobile a few years back, I used my passport, and I have been with other Chinese friends who have had to use their own ID number too. That's the legitimate market.

Though naturally, anyone with rebellious ideas in mind would certainly not bother to buy their phone in the main China Mobile store downtown...

China's censorship attempts are not to be pshaw'd lightly and North American's are not brainwashed about China. One of the pillars of a totalitarian regime is a lack of freedom of speech and this is precisely China's aim - to completely control freedom of speech.

It doesn't matter if the government is having trouble mastering it. China's government has the guns, tanks and monopoly on physical force. If anything seems to get out of control, the Chinese government can turn off the power where needed, amass their army, shoot who they will, i.e murder opposition leaders and dissidents, and all will be back to order.

@Riph You're right about the youth in China being tech savvy. However you are wrong about something, in China, you can buy a china mobile/telecom/unicom SIM card pretty much on every street corner in any city without showing any ID or anything. Those SIMs are registered in bulk by the vendors. I get a new SIM card every few weeks just as a matter of habit -- they're very cheap too. I just walk into any of the thousands of street-side independent cell phone shops, give them 100 RMB and they give me an envelope with my new SIM. Most cell plans in China are pre-paid types (at least in my area near Shanghai, I can't speak for Beijing or other areas.) VPNs and proxies are big here as well, at least underground. I personally use a great VPN that allows me full, completely encrypted access to any website I want -- youtube, twitter, facebook, Tibet sites, Dalai Lama sites, etc.. The "free" internet is the samizdat of China. People know what's going on, even if they must not publicly announce their means of obtaining the information. The CCP really doesn't do much in the lives of everyday people, so that's why there aren't protests in the streets all the time. Obama's administration is acting more Maoist than is the CCP.. Of course, China is a powder keg -- all it will take is one significant incident (like Tianammen Square) for the population to mobilize. This isn't 1989. If Tianammen happened today, there'd be a completely different outcome.

@*scarish* - I think you need to be much more worried about Fox News and other right-wing US propaganda and how they affect Americans view on reality.

Americans are so brainwashed that a significant percentage of them don't even think Universal healthcare would be a good idea even though (with a good plan) it could save them half a trillion dollars a year.

Riph: your cellphone is NOT registered with your national ID number. You could pretty much buy any SIM card off of the guy in his pyjamas selling beer in your neighborhood. No one knows you have that number except for yourself.

That's why you see all these wall postings in China about getting "Fake IDs", "black cars", or "Sexual enhancement" with a mobile number linked to them. It's impossible to track someone down just by their cellphone number.

Censorship has become something of a joke in China. Virtually everyone, especially those under-30, knows how to get around it, it's now just become a nuisance for people to type the right characters onto a cellphone to avoid gov't censors. For those who think China is an Orwellian regime, think twice. For one, it's impossible to keep track of 1.3 billion people every second of every day. On a daily basis, censors ONLY track those messages that contain certain "keywords" like "6-4", "Jiang Zemin" etc. But even those slip thru (as most Chinese are now aware of the various Jiang jokes, such as his illicit affairs etc). These messages make up less than 0.1% of China's texting.

Some things are actually having a negative effect on the Chinese gov't, as much as they like to believe otherwise. For example, "Hexie", Hu Jintao's signature ideology promoting a "harmonious society" is now the butt of jokes with China's internet-age population. Funny that Western Media always labels the government as having an "iron grip". Psht. It's far from it.

Also, it's interesting that the government says it wants to crack down on porn when 70% of all my chain-texts are to do with some kind of sexual joke.

When the Sichuan earthquake happened you could donate by texting to China Mobile. I thought that was a nice feature.

In any case, China's "texting" technology is now way ahead of Europe and North America. It's become an inseparable part of culture. You could do so many things with it, including making credit card purchases, paying bills, etc. etc. And it's not just in urban areas.

China's youth are very internet savvy, and plenty know how to get around government barriers and access unrestricted internet. Not many of them are careless enough to mass text something like "Hey let's go protest tomorrow at 9am" via their China Mobile accounts (which are registered with their national ID numbers).

As for yellow text, Chinese slang tends to evolve quite quickly. As soon as one word is found to trigger the sensors, then another euphemism will quickly be invented that is a creative mix of numerics, phonetics, and/or homonyms.

JanBro wrote: "Red-texting ay not be a big hit with the U.S or other democratic-oriented countries, but China is doing what it has to in
order to stay on top."

Censorship has nothing to do with keeping China on top, and everything to do with keeping the CCP on top. The two are quite different things. The Chinese people are capable of great things without the communist party. In fact, as their economy advances, the censorship and other forms of repression necessary to keep the CCP in power will increasingly be a drag on a society that needs initiative, innovation, and creativity to progress.

This red-texting in itself shows some degree of change and westernization in China. Also, it shows how globalization has affected all. Although people in China are given the liberty of texting, they are still kept under restrictions by its filters by government officials. I believe this is just another way of China trying to crack down on any disloyalty or dissidents within its interior. Overall, for the way China has been running its government for the past few years, this may seem odd to foreigners but the people should be content or at least used to these kinds of measured taken by the government. Outsiders may view this act as unconstitutional and a violation of personal rights, but China has been on the rise for the past few years and such drastic measures have proven to be effective in their cause. Red-texting ay not be a big hit with the U.S or other democratic-oriented countries, but China is doing what it has to in order to stay on top.

Yet, the most popular text message in China still are coupons when you walk into store and blah blah county's specially liquor when you are traveling on train. (They do that every time you cross a county line, and I'm not even able to get off the train!!) If you been to China and owned a cellphone there in the last 5 years, you'll know what i'm talking about. CCP is simply playing catch up in a CCTV kind of way.

Great that this kind of issues are picked up by the Economist. I do see some good sides (to prevent spread of certain messages such as texting is said to be linked to organising the Sinkiang unrest), it is really important what can be deemed "yellow" and "red". Bo's message frankly does not have much appeal to be forwarded, the most popular text messages are pranks and jokes.